


wonderland

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: “If you don’t start going faster with that garland”—Frankie takes her time with the words, winding up to whatever benign threat she’s concocting—“we’re going to have to go back to Westfield UTC and get store-bought.”
Relationships: Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Comments: 23
Kudos: 117





	wonderland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dollsome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/gifts).



> For the wonderful dollsome, who deserves all the peace this season can provide and a more joyful 2020. This PG-13 lesbian Christmas special is brought to you by dollsome's prompt, which was for a holiday story involving Grace, Frankie, mistletoe, and possibly a mall Santa rivalry. I hope you enjoy, friend. <3
> 
> (Also: I know I keep using Laura Veirs for my epigraphs, but I can't help it. This song is about a painter who opens the speaker up emotionally! You can't make this stuff up!)

_I was bent over my chest_  
_An invisible line_  
_Sinking_  
_But then the light_  
_The lamp that I held_  
_In my blistered hands_  
_You the fuel_  
_And me the fool for not noticing_

—Laura Veirs, “Parisian Dream” 

⁂

“If you don’t start going faster with that garland”—Frankie takes her time with the words, winding up to whatever benign threat she’s concocting—“we’re going to have to go back to Westfield UTC and get store-bought.” 

They both hate the Westfield UTC mall, and they’ve been twice already this week. Grace wants to avoid a third trip, but her joints ache from stringing popcorn and cranberries onto bright green thread. She and Frankie have sat at the dining-room table for what feels like hours. The table is glitter- and popcorn-strewn, and covered in little bits of cut paper, and a few globs of glue from Frankie’s snowman art threaten to drip past the layers of protective newsprint and onto the wood. The whole house is a mess of semi-successful Christmas decor, little of it fully dried, and Frankie’s we’re-the-fun-grandmas-that’s-why-we’re-having-the-grandkids-over-to-make-gingerbread-houses-that-are-actually-graham-cracker-houses-on-the-first-day-of-winter-break party starts in just a couple of hours. The Christmas tree is fine, all white lights and round glass ornaments, but everything else feels frantic and unnecessary. “Why do you keep making up excuses to go back there? You wanna flirt with Santa that bad?”

“Ugh,” Frankie says. “ _Not_ my type. I just think there’s something off about that guy. He’s got a traveling belly and his beard has a receding hairline.” 

“He’s an underemployed forty-five year old with a pillow and a beard wig. Case closed.” 

“You’re good, Hanson.”

“I’ll try to go faster,” Grace says. She pulls the bowl of stale popcorn closer and uncoils more thread from her spool. “But my wrist is acting up.” Before Frankie can express her sympathy or suggest a more arthritis-friendly task, she adds, “It’s not like anyone will notice if the railing’s draped with three strands of garland instead of four. And if it hangs down too long, Faith might try to eat it.”

“Grace. Do you even care about this party?”

“No,” she says, the flat syllable an imperfect truth.

“Think you could’ve said something a little sooner?”

“Oh my God, Frankie, I’ve been telling you not to throw this party—” Since she left Nick. Since she moved back home. Since she arrived back here and Frankie welcomed her but didn’t want to talk to her or listen to her, seemed to want only to make plans and invite people over and sculpt snowmen and take pointless trips to the mall. “—for a week.” 

“Well." Frankie stands. “It’s a little late now.” 

⁂

The party is very sticky. Grace and Frankie barely finish cleaning up the mess from the decorations before Mallory, Bud, and all five children arrive and the dining room becomes an explosion of Honey Grahams and thick icing and hard candies popped into mouths and dropped on the floor and rolled under chair rungs. Grace sits between her older grandchildren because that’s where she’s supposed to sit. She dutifully hands Macklin the miniature candy canes when he asks, holds a graham cracker wall steady when Maddie needs her help, keeps her mouth shut about their sloppy technique because any idiot can see they’re having fun. Faith’s high chair is set up not far from the stair railing, and she keeps Faith from eating the popcorn garland when no one else is paying attention. 

She thinks about her bed, and how she could go fall asleep in it and wake up alone or almost alone in a quiet house. She’s never been a great sleeper, but in this moment of longing sleep seems easy. Her bed at the beach house is the best bed she’s ever had.

She excuses herself—against her better judgment because she and Bud are the only adults in the dining room—and heads for the hall bathroom, a compromise between the chaos of the party and solace of her bedroom. The bathroom door is ajar, and in the visible sliver of the sink mirror she sees Mallory’s hair. “I don’t know what to do,” Frankie’s saying in her indoor voice. “She’s just going through the motions. She’s like a wounded puppy—well. A wounded older dog. A puppy wouldn’t be this depressed.” 

Mallory, quieter: “She’s obviously having a hard time, but she’s here, isn’t she? I saw her interact with some frosting just a couple minutes ago. And with my children, so, you know, be patient.”

When she gets to her bedroom, Grace doesn’t pull down the covers. She lies face down on top of the blankets and lets her face sink into the pillow until she has to turn to the side to breathe. She doesn’t have to talk or smile or be helpful, but even here there’s no peace. The kids’ high-pitched voices float up the stairs and past her shut door, the cadence of the conversation unchanged in her absence.

The knock on the door—five taps, an unfinished rhythm—is undeniably Frankie. “I’m coming in,” Frankie announces as she opens the door. Grace says nothing and changes nothing about her position. 

Frankie walks around to the side of the bed Grace occupies and perches on the edge. “I wanted you to have a good Christmas,” she says. “Now that you’re back home. We really didn’t have much Christmas stuff in the house, and I thought—well, you love Christmas.” 

“Sort of,” Grace says. Frankie chuckles at that.

“I’m so glad you’re home. I don’t want you to be disappointed.” 

The hand on Grace’s back is Frankie’s. The bed holds her up, but the hand supports her, presses her almost imperceptibly against the firm mattress. Grace opens her eyes: home, her room, the pillowcase creasing her vision, the dark green of Frankie’s skirt. She shuts her eyes again and Frankie’s hand is still here.

“I’m not disappointed, Frankie. I just wanna be home.”

“You are, okay? You are.” 

“I’m not a sad dog.”

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry—”

“I want to talk about it,” Grace says. “About what happened and why I had to come back.” 

“All right,” Frankie says. She strokes up and down the length of Grace’s back, makes finger-streaks in her grey sweater. Grace shivers. 

“Later,” Grace clarifies. “After everyone’s gone.” 

“Okay. I’m all ears, promise. In the meantime, think you can come back downstairs? The graham cracker village is in shambles, but I think the two of us could put things right again.” 

On the way back downstairs, Grace notices the mistletoe for the first time. It hangs on a nail above the front door, a door they hardly use. She’s pretty sure the nail wasn’t there until today, and points before she can think better of it.

“Oh yeah,” Frankie says. “Look at that.” She’s a stair step behind Grace, and Grace feels her stop moving. Frankie doesn’t start walking again until Grace finishes climbing down and waits for her at the landing. 

There’s a crash in the kitchen. One of the twins starts crying, then the other, then Faith. All it means is that everyone else is occupied when Grace glances at the mistletoe, Frankie watching, and backs up against the door. Frankie kisses her forehead first, a continuation of the promise to listen to Grace’s story. Grace places her hands on Frankie’s shoulders, and Frankie’s hands go to Grace’s hips. They look at each other, exchange the silent question about what happens next. The nervous energy is the answer. Frankie steps forward, and the door presses against Grace’s shoulder blades. 

There’s a little shard of peppermint at the corner of Frankie’s mouth. Grace uses her index finger to brush it off, but it sticks to the end of her finger. She licks it away—doesn’t even think about it, just senses the sharp sweetness and eats. When they kiss on the lips the peppermint is still in her mouth. By the time they finish, it’s gone. 

“Moms?” Bud calls from the other room. “If I were a large stack of spare kitchen towels, where would I be?”

“Linen closet,” Grace says in an ineffectual whisper.

“Linen closet!” Frankie yells, her face mere inches from Grace’s. Grace startles even though she knew it was coming. “Sorry.” Frankie doesn’t look sorry at all.

⁂

It’s been dark for a couple of hours by the time they send the kids off with hugs and spare candy. It’ll take at least a day or two for the icing that holds the houses together to set, so the village will live on the kitchen island until the houses are ready for transit. 

“Deep clean first thing in the morning, obviously,” Frankie says as soon as the kitchen door closes. Grace can count on one hand the number of times Frankie’s uttered this particular sort of aphrodisiac. “But what’s the minimum amount of clean-up I need to do tonight for you to be undistracted by the mess while we hang out?”

“Trash in the trash, dishes in the dishwasher, no crumbs anywhere. Maybe a loose layer of foil over Winter Wonderland?”

“So basically discard or hide anything a rat would want to eat, got it. A fair request.” 

Frankie cleans; Grace sits on the couch with a glass of wine. When the kitchen sounds go quiet, Grace sets her glass on the coffee table, sits back with a smile, and Frankie rushes in, rushes to the couch, rushes to kiss her again.

“Hey,” Frankie says when she pulls away. Her bottom lip is shiny. She doesn’t wipe off the moisture. “Our first kiss not compelled by a symbolic plant.” 

“Well, first kiss on the lips,” Grace says. She clearly remembers kissing Frankie’s fingers when she detoxed before her knee surgery, and so many pecks on the cheek, and so many promise kisses. 

Frankie nods. “Our other kisses count, don’t they.” 

“Yeah.” They have to count. She spent so long hardly thinking about them, but now she can’t bear it if they don’t count. “Where’d you get that mistletoe, anyway?”

“I’m not telling. I have to keep _some_ air of mystery about me.”

“Fine. I guess it worked.”

“I’m going to take such good care of you,” Frankie says. 

Grace looks at Frankie, at the smile twitching the corners of her mouth, the brightness in her eyes in the dark tree-lit room. Just as she knows when Frankie’s cooking up a plan that will involve trespassing or Del Taco or unexpected sculpture or all three, she knows what she’s in for now. The look on Frankie’s face says Grace is going to gain six pounds and go to the movies in the middle of the afternoon and have multiple orgasms every weekend and sometimes on a Monday or Thursday or any old day, just because she deserves it. They’ll play music in the kitchen and burn candles with feuding scents and put their plates in the dishwasher but leave their coffee mugs and wine glasses everywhere. Grace nods. “I know you will.” She tilts her head to the side. “I will, too.” 

“Thanks,” Frankie says sweetly. “I know we have to talk.” 

They’ll talk. But today was clarifying, even if a kiss isn’t exactly a conversation, and instead of speaking right at this moment they sit together in silence and look at the lights on the tree.


End file.
